UNTIL IT DOESN'T HURT

The Note

The kettle shut off with a click, and the apartment became too loud.

The note was on the table, and I saw it before anything else, standing like a reproach. It was flat, plain, written in his small, even hand. The coffee beside it was cold. Those two things, the note and the cold coffee seemed to buckle the room in half.

I hunched forward, pressing one hand flat on the wood as if the table could provide some answer I could not decipher. The words themselves were simple: "I'm sorry. I can't be what you need me right now." No name, no signature, no plan. Just the sentence and the space that followed it.

A prolonged, animal sound escaped my chest, like waking up in a dream. I re-read the note, searching for a line to pull on and spin out into a solution. There was nothing.

The flat reeked of burnt toast and the faint, close sweat of a week of living jammed. His coat remained on the hook by the door. There was one sock on the carpet in the living room, a small, stubborn reminder. I noticed every small detail, and each detail hurt.

My phone beeped on the counter. His name lit up the screen, and a rush of anger hit first before the sadness set in; anger at the timing, at the cowardliness, at the neat way he left the world and left the work of him for me to accomplish.

I did not answer. I folded the note along the crease he had made and placed it in the curve of my palm like a talisman. The paper felt weak and inadequate. It could not extinguish the pain. It could not tell me why.

Outside, rain started with the patient sound of someone banging on a window. I did the one sensible thing I could imagine: I took my coat and stepped outside. Not to get him. Not to face him, but to move. Movement might be medicine. Standing still was defeat.

The city was a rain-dampened haze. Umbrellas were held close, footsteps beating a rhythm that didn't invite interruption. A kid pulled a grudging adult to a bus stop, laughing at little, genuine things that make someone else's day. I watched them and felt like a stranger in the lexicon of ordinary lives.

A creaking bakery door spilled warm air onto the rain-glossy pavement. I slipped inside because the smell filled the empty spaces in my head. The baker looked up and smiled, as if he had a blueprint for fixing broken things. He placed a paper bag into my hand without asking and said, "On the house," like generosity was something he could spend.

I almost said no. I took the bag and felt the heat of the pastry against the paper inside. For a moment, the world reoriented itself: the softness of butter pastry, the curled mist of steam that greased the glass. I ate it on the sidewalk corner, rain moistening the hem of my coat, and chewing cleared out space in my chest for something cleaner than raw pain.

I had no place to go. My feet took me along the river, by the graffiti tunnel where artists' brush strokes inscribed brick, by buskers who replayed old tunes in new voices. Every face that crossed mine was a missing piece on the city's puzzleboard. They did not slow down for me, and that, I decided, was a mercy. The world did not need to know, and would not know, the shape of my hurt.

My sister had phoned at some point during the afternoon. I let it ring through until it went to voicemail. I was relieved and also guilty. How do you tell someone that the person you had trusted with your emergency key left with nothing but a sentence? I didn't have the right words for it. I had the bare facts and a torn area to repair later.

A man tossed a sack of oranges onto a crosswalk. They flew out over the sidewalk like little suns. No one else moved, because accidents draw attention. I found myself loading my arms with fruit, dumb and useful both. The man smiled and thanked me, his face relaxing into relief. His hands were warm. He did not ask me why I was out in the rain. He did not need to. For one moment, I had a place in the world that was not all pointy ends.